"Murray Leinster - The Mole Pirate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

was quite unconscious, and blood flowed from a nasty blackjack wound on his temple. Mrs.
Hohenstaufer squawked in dismay.
It was half an hour before the police came. In that time Mrs. Hohenstaufer had cut the ropes from
about the man's body. She had carried him, herself, all the way back to the house. There she
telephoned for the police and a doctor and regarded her patient with extreme disfavour. He was
undoubtedly one of these criminals of whom the radio chattered constantly.
She greeted the police with indignant protests against their allowing criminals to clutter Up the
wood lots of law-abiding people with their victims and acquaintances.
Then the officers saw her patient.
'Good Heaven!' said the first. 'It's Professor Eisenstein! What the hell's happened to him ?'
'Prof--' Mrs. Hohenstaufer squeaked. 'The scientist ? The great scientist that all the papers
print pictures of?'
'That's who,' said the cop. 'Here! We got to get him fixed up so he can tell us -'



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The patient's eyes opened vaguely. His whiskers stirred. 'Durran,' said the injured man faintly,
'Durran, you verdammt fool, what is der idea ?'
Then he looked bewildered.
The cops snapped phrases of explanation.
'An' you were talkin' about Durran,' said one of the two feverishly. 'Did he sock you, professor
?'
'To be sure.' The white-baked man blinked and said angrily: 'I came out of my house and got in my
car. I had an appointment to visit der American Electric laboratories, where Jack Hill is going to
show off a most remarkable infention today. And halfway there, my chauffeur turned around, and he
was not my chauffeur. He was Durran, whom I knew. And he hit me with a blackjack. I suppose he has
stolen my car.'
'Right!' snapped the cop. 'Brady, you got it? Phone in an' give the alarm. Durran's in Professor
Eisenstein's car, an' it's a blue Diessel, licence number is -'
The other cop snapped into the telephone. Plugs clicked. A smoothly running organization moved
swiftly into action. Short radio waves carried a brisk, curt order into every police car in New
York, and to police-car headquarters in at least two adjoining States. In fifteen minutes, by
actual timing, there were more than two hundred police cars, at least a hundred traffic posts, and
even a few stray members of the general public feverishly on the lookout for Professor
Eisenstein's blue Diessel, because it contained America's Public Enemy No. 1.
And all that effort and all that searching was in vain; Because the blue Diessel was parked
outside the American | Electric laboratories, where Professor Eisenstein had an appointment, and
nobody thought of noticing it.
It was not until Professor Eisenstein's secretary was notified of his whereabouts and telephoned
an apologetic message to the laboratory that the blue Diesel was noticed. The professor and Mrs.
Hohenstaufer immediately vanished from the tale of the Mole Pirate. But in the meantime things had
happened.

II

Jack Hill was talking to reporters in the machine-shop section of the American Electric
laboratories. The lathes and machine tools were covered over, for the moment, and there were a